Free Prelude for War by Leslie Charteris Page B

notice it.
    Simon’s glance travelled on
and found the faces of Peter and Patricia among the
scatter of pink blobs that were turned up to him. He held
their eyes for a moment with a message of impenitent
devilry.
    The jury were goggling at
him openmouthed, with the sole exception of the
small black-bearded man, who had taken up a Napoleonic
posture with his arms proudly folded and a radiance of
anarchistic joy on his face. The coroner had
gone slightly purple; he banged on the table in front of
him.
    “Silence!” he
shouted. “Silence, or I’ll have the court cleared!”
    He turned angrily on Simon.
    “We are not interested
in your theories, Mr Templar, and you had no right to
make such a statement. You will please remember that this
is a court of law.”
    “I’m trying to,”
said the Saint unflinchingly. “I thought I
was summoned here to give evidence. I haven’t had the chance to give any yet.
I’m not offering theories. I’m trying to draw attention to
one or two very curious and even fishy facts
which I have not been allowed to mention.”
    “What are they?”
chirped the little juryman exultantly, before
the coroner could speak again.
    “For instance,”
said the Saint, “there is the fact which I noticed, which the lady who was
with me noticed, and which even the police who
were on the scene must have noticed, that every ground-floor window in
sight was open, producing a draught which
must have materially helped the growth
of the fire.”
    Fairweather stood up.
    “I could have
explained that if it had been brought up before,”
he said. “It is true that most of the windows were probably open. It was a warm evening, and they had been open all day. It has always been the butler’s duty to lock up the house before he retires, and it had completely escaped my attention that he was not there to do it that night when we
went to bed. He would, of course, have locked
up as soon as he came in; but unfortunately the fire started
before that.”
    “Thank you, Mr
Fairweather.”
    The coroner shifted the
papers on his desk again with two or three aimless, jerky
movements, as if to gain time to re-establish his
domination. Then he leaned back again and put his finger
tips together and went on in a more trenchant voice.
    “This is a
regrettable but instructive example of the danger
of jumping to rash conclusions. It is one very good reason
why the personal opinions of witnesses are not admissible
in evidence. There are some people whose warped
minds are prone to place a malicious interpretation on
anything of which the true explanation is beyond their limited
intelligence. There are also persons whose desire for
cheap notoriety leads them to distort and exaggerate without
restraint when they find themselves temporarily in the
public eye, in the hope of attracting more attention to themselves. It is the duty of a court to protect the reputations of
other witnesses, and the open-mindedness of the jury,
from the harm which may be done by such irresponsible insinuations. In this
case, an insignificant fact which is not contested has
been brought up with much ado. But so far from supporting
the suggestion that there is something ‘fishy’
involved, to any normal and intelligent person it merely confirms the
chain of mischances through which the deceased
lost his life.”
    “All right,”
said the Saint, through his teeth. “Then why was
Kennet’s door locked?”
    The coroner lost his head
for a moment.
    “How do you know it
was locked?”
    “Because I saw it. I
got as far as his room, and I could have got him out if
I could have got in. But it was locked, and
it was too strong to break down. I went back to get an
axe, but the floor of the corridor caved in before I could get back.”
    “Well, supposing his
door was locked—what of it?” demanded the
coroner in an exasperated voice. “Why shouldn’t he lock his door?”
    Simon spoke very gently and
evenly.
    “I imagine he had
every reason for locking